Moonbot Studios developing PC game

Moonbot Studios developing PC game

Moonbot Studios, the Shreveport company that created the Oscar-winning animated short film, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” announced a Kickstarter campaign Monday to raise $750,000 for the development of the studio’s first PC game. “Golem,” based in Jewish folklore that dates to 16th-century Prague, is inspired by the story of a manmade giant built from clay, wood, metal and stone.

“We wanted to do something that was exciting, something that was poetic, something that was lyrical, something that was terrifying,” Oscar-winning Moonbot Studios principal William Joyce said during a Monday news conference.

“We knocked around a number of ideas,” Joyce said. “One of them that I’ve been working on for a long, long time is about the ancient folk tale of the Golem, an invincible man of clay.”

The influence of “Golem” can be seen in such later characters as the Frankenstein monster and the Terminator, Joyce said.

“It’s sort of the first monster story.”

Kickstarter is an online fundraising platform that routes contributions to creative projects such as games, films, music, art and technology. If a project funded through Kickstarter is successful, Kickstarter applies a 5 percent fee to funds collected for it.

Moonbot’s “Golem” campaign begins Feb. 4 and ends March 26. The company hopes to deliver the game by mid-2015.

The studio’s other projects have included the Webby award-winning app, “The Numberlys,” and a first of its kind interactive music video app for Polyphonic Spree’s song, “Bullseye.”

Joyce is also an executive producer of the feature-length DreamWorks Animation film “Rise of the Guardians” and author of the book the movie is based on.